Mr. Clive Byrne:

On the pressure or pinch-points to which Deputy Daly referred at primary level and moving to post-primary level, a serious issue was that the primary schools were very reluctant to hand over information to second level schools. There are 3,500 primary school and 700 post-primary schools. The school in which Mr. Paul Byrne is based in Carrick-on-Shannon is the stand-alone school within that town and the primary schools feed into it. In many urban areas parents are chopping and changing between which second level schools their children will attend.

Deputy Daly, Senator Moran and the Chairman spoke about policy provision. The school administration package user group, which is a working group within the Department of Education and Skills, is very keen to work on post-primary and primary databases. My understanding is the work it is doing will mean that when a second level school offers a place to a particular student in primary school, the school will be able to download information on the system which will travel to the second level school. In those circumstances when that happens and the place has been offered, another second level school will be precluded from picking up information about that student. That would be worthwhile in terms of making sure that the proper information follows to the second level school in order that the needs of the student can be taken on board.

Initial teacher training is now a two-year a professional master's course. In the past with the old HDip course, one might found a minority of students doing an optional module in special needs education but there is no reason in terms of the current initial training that teachers should not be equipped to deal with the differentiation issues that arise in students with special education needs coming into classes. From a policy point of view, it would be a very strong recommendation coming from the committee that this should be a key part of the training. Our primary colleagues are much better trained in areas to do with differentiation than our second level teacher colleagues.